It's easy to be cynical about the latest proposal from government downsizing guru Kevin Gaughan -- the one that calls for reducing the size of the New York Legislature by about 17 percent. A smaller Legislature, after all, would simply be easier for special interest money to buy.

Gaughan, the Hamburg lawyer who has already persuaded several area towns to downsize their boards and has turned his attention to the proposed dissolution of local villages, wants to reduce the State Senate from 62 members to 50, and shrink the Assembly to 125 from 150. But, while smaller may be better when it comes to town boards, it isn't the number of state lawmakers that is the problem. It is the way they are chosen.

Gaughan's plan would leave New Yorkers with 37 fewer lawmakers holding their hands out for campaign contributions. There would not be nearly as many invitations to chicken dinners, taco lunches or bagel breakfasts that lobbyists, who know what side their bread is buttered on, would be unwise to decline, whether they were hungry or not.

The lobbyists might lose some weight. They might spend less of their money influencing our elected representatives. Or they might spread the same amount of money around fewer politicians, leaving each with a bit more boodle than he is raking in now.

Gaughan figures his plan would save taxpayers $37 million a year in the legislative budget. Not all that much in the scheme of things, though it might make the amount of money shelled out every time the Legislature is called into special session, and does nothing, easier to take.

And it could certainly be argued that New York has way more lawmakers than it needs. Or uses. The speaker of the Assembly and the majority leader of the Senate hold so much power -- making up, with the governor, the Three Men in a Room who dictate budget decisions -- that maybe we don't need a Legislature at all. Maybe we ought to be honest about the fact that we are ruled by a Triumvirate -- in the style of Octavian, Antony and Marcus Lepidus -- and just shrink the Legislature down to nothing.

OK. This is no joke, to Gaughan or to all New York residents and taxpayers. So let's face the problem head on.

What the New York Legislature really needs is not fewer members, or more members, but better members. And one key way to do that would be, as we have often argued in this space, to change the way legislative districts are drawn.

Taking that function away from the lawmakers themselves and turning it over to an independent, nonpartisan commission would end the practice of drawing district lines in ways that make seats safe for incumbents, or at least so tilted in favor of either Democrats or Republicans that no real choice is ever offered to the voters.

Truly competitive legislative races, whether there are 212 of them, 175 or 12, would be much more responsive to the popular will and less likely to become the personal property of incumbents, property they can use to extort campaign contributions from special interests who know they aren't influencing the outcome of any election, just influencing their chances of being heard by the winners.

The effort necessary to affect Gaughan's plan -- the lengthy process of amending the state constitution -- would be put to better use pushing for a new way of apportioning legislative districts rather than just making those districts larger.